Tomcat

by David E. Meadows

  “The three vehicles will not carry everyone. The humvees will carry seven for the first one and eight in the second. And the truck; maybe, we can force twenty, thirty onto it. But, we do not have room for the supplies we need and the people we must carry.”

  Stapler looked at the man. His bladder was full, and he needed to pee again. Age sure took its toll on a warrior.

  Finally, Heinrich leaned forward, his eyes wide, and asked, “So, what do I do?”

  CHAPTER 3

  Compartments aboard NAVY ships are always small, even those on aircraft carriers such as the USS Stennis, CVN-74. A fatigued Clive Bowen, Admiral Gordon Cameron’s chief of staff, and Rear Admiral Pete Devlin, the thin crew-cut commander of the Mediterranean Naval Air Forces, had been bumping into each other throughout the morning as they maneuvered around the small staff operations space. Clive couldn’t help thinking of balls in a pinball machine as the two men bumped into each other again.

  “Damn, Clive, I’m trying to drink this coffee, not wear it,” Devlin said.

  The Jone aluminum table with a lighted top to reflect through the charts also had a low light hanging overhead.

  The arrangement forced the two men to lean over the plots when they reviewed the day’s activities and tried to determine the schedule for tomorrow.

  “Sorry, Admiral,” Clive said, although it was Devlin who was doing the pacing.

  “How is he?” Pete Devlin asked Clive, setting his Navy cup on the edge of the table. He leaned forward with his hands on both sides of the cup.

  Clive ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and straightened up from the plot table. “He looked all right when he landed a couple of hours ago. I haven’t had a chance to talk much with him, Admiral. He did say the children were holding up well, and his wife’s funeral was one of the biggest the town had ever had. I think he appreciated the local community’s support for him and his family, considering they have lived away for over thirty years.”

  “I didn’t think he would go.”

  Clive nodded. “I know. We had originally diverted the Albany after the Tomahawk attack so the admiral could disembark. When the top secret message arrived from Naval Intelligence telling us they expected the Algerian rebels to either overrun or attack the embassy, I knew the admiral wouldn’t go. I was right. It was good of the family to delay the funeral until he could be there.”

  “When was the funeral? I forgot.”

  “Last Sunday. He stayed with her parents for a couple of days and then flew with his son and daughter to Washington.

  They went their separate ways while he met with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and with Admiral Dotson, the new chief of Naval Operations. You know he spent the past two days in Stuttgart, Germany, with General Sutherland going over the situation here.”

  “Yeah, I hear that Sutherland is sending in an Army general to be the commander of the Joint Task Force?”

  Clive nodded. “Yeah, he’s a three-star out of Washington named … ” Clive reached in his pocket and pulled out a three-by-five card. “General Leutze Lewis. According to his bio, his friends call him Rocky.”

  “Rocky! From what I have heard from some of my former Army classmates from Industrial College of the Armed Forces, working for him is the same way.” Devlin paused and sipped his coffee.

  “Then you must have some insight I don’t?”

  Admiral Devlin ignored the question. “Our boss. Admiral Cameron, has been the commander of this Joint Task Force for the past three weeks, as he should be. I mean, by God, ninety-nine percent of this effort is Navy and Marines. Every now and then, the Air Force flies through with their aerial version of an aircraft carrier.

  Now, when it looks as if we may be pulling out within the next two weeks, they send some asshole from Washington to take charge and soak up credit for Cameron’s work.

  What are they thinking? That Cam and I aren’t doing ours?”

  Clive didn’t have an answer for the mercurial admiral.

  This was way above his head. He was Admiral Cameron’s chief of staff. Where the admiral went, he went. His job was to make the admiral’s orders take effect and do whatever else he could to make the three-star’s job easier.

  But Devlin didn’t want an answer. He just wanted someone to listen. Devlin would probably be a three-or four-star now, if he could control his propensity for speaking his mind. Devlin took his half-empty cup of coffee, turned, and walked to the bank of nine televisions that filled one side of the compartment, mumbling under his breath as he moved. The few enlisted sailors and the chief running the compartment moved casually but purposefully out of the path of the pacing flag, almost as if they had a sixth sense as to when to weave and when to dodge.

  Most of the televisions were off. The one in the left hand corner of the third row silently showed flight deck operations from a camera mounted flush with the flight deck. A F-14 was hooked to the forward-port catapult.

  Clive moved beside Admiral Devlin. Together they watched the afterburner shoot out from the exhaust of the Tomcat. The Sidewinder missiles on both sides of the wings revealed the aircraft was armed for air-to-air combat.

  The steel barriers raised behind the aircraft deflected the heat and flames up and away from flight deck crewmen, who continued to hurry back and forth behind the aircraft where they maneuvered a waiting aircraft into position for launch. Even this far belowdecks, the noise of the engines revving up to max power penetrated the space.

  The only thing missing was the overwhelming heat and the thick smell of burning fuel.

  “I miss that,” Devlin said wistfully over the noise.

  “Me, too.” Clive was a fighter pilot. Maybe he would get another command tour after this job. Clive never considered himself admiral material. He had been in zone for admiral last year and watched four others — two of them fellow Academy classmates — get selected for their one star. It was not inconceivable the board could go above zone as they routinely did in the more restricted-line communities like the Cryptologic and Intelligence officers.

  However, for unrestricted-line officers who made up the war fighters of the Navy, it would be unusual for them to do so.

  The pilot of the Hornet saluted the unseen catapult operator to his left. Two seconds later, the catapult threw the aircraft off the deck and into the air at a thrust designed to give the F-14 the ten knots extra headwind needed to be airborne.

  Devlin turned to Clive. “Does anyone know anything other than rumors about this new CJTF who is coming? I mean, what is the straight skinny on him, Clive? The only thing I have heard is that he is a bear to work for.”

  Clive shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know, sir. Just have what we got off the Internet and through official channels. General Lewis is an airborne calvary officer.

  Before moving over to the five-sided building in Washington, he was the commander of the Old Guard at Fort Mcnair. He was the deputy J-3 for Operations at JCS before they moved him to some highfalutin job as the Army Legislative Affairs officer. One thing I saw on the Internet is that last year, when the old chief of staff of the Army was retiring, Lewis was being pushed by some members of Congress to relieve him. But he only got his third star last year, so he wasn’t even considered by the Army for its chief of staff.” He paused. “Oh, another thing is, he is an avid athlete. He has run a bunch of marathons, including every one of the Marine Corps marathons in

  Washington, I understand he has finished near the top in every one of them.”

  “Just what we need: a physical-fitness zealot.”

  Clive shrugged his shoulders.

  Devlin smiled. “If Lewis only got his third star last year, then Gordon is senior to him!” The smile left his face. “Then, why. pray tell, are they sending an Army general to take over control of a primarily Navy and Marine Corps operation?” He raised his finger, waving off Clive’s response. “I know, I know: Joint operations, which I wholeheartedly support, as we all should, sometimes doesn’t make hell-to-hi
gh-water sense to me. As much as 1 think Air Force officers are prima donnas, they have more forces involved here than the Army.”

  The grinding noise of the catches on the watertight door leading into the compartment caught their attention.

  The door opened, and into the Operations space Vice Admiral Gordon Cameron, commander of the United States Sixth Fleet, and until later this afternoon, the commander of the Joint Task Force for Operation African Force, stepped into the compartment.

  “Attention on deck!” shouted the chief, who was monitoring an intelligence broadcast system on the other side of the compartment from Clive and Pete Devlin.

  “Carry on.” Admiral Cameron said.

  The Marine guard accompanying the admiral took position in the passageway, with his hack to the compartment.

  Admiral Cameron reached behind him, shut the door, and pushed the long, three-foot handle down, securing the bolts that held the watertight door fast.

  “Welcome back, Admiral,” Pete Devlin said, crossing the room to shake Cameron’s hand. “How’s the shoulder and back?”

  “Pete, good to see you. They’re fine, though if you listen to Chuck Jacobs, our fleet surgeon, you’d think 1 still need to be in the bed laid up in traction. At least, so far, I haven’t seen Kathy Gray living in my outer room again, which is probably a good thing. She is tougher than the doc on telling me what 1 can and can’t do.” Kathleen Gray had been the Navy nurse on duty the night Cameron had been shot by terrorists during the car bombing attack against the pier side USS Lasaile and USS Simon Lake in Gaeta, Italy.

  Devlin pushed his aviator glasses back on his nose.

  “You know how those doctors are, Admiral. If you get well, they’re out of a job. For nurses, if you get well, then they’ve done their jobs.”

  Cameron chuckled. “Yes, you’re probably right. However, to answer your question, the bullet wounds weren’t that serious in the first place. They hit at such an oblique angle that Chuck said he could have pinched them out like a splinter if he’d wanted. I heard about the Lasalle and the Simon Lake.”

  The car bombing of the flagship, USS Lasalle, and the submarine tender, USS Simon Lake, had sent sterns of both ships — Mediterranean moored stern to the pier — to the bottom of Gaeta Harbor. Both had been refloated within a week, but the propellers on the Lasalle still rested in the mud on the bottom of the harbor. The messages Admiral Cameron read on the short flight to the carrier told the story. According to the Surface Force Atlantic engineers flown out to help, the aged engineering plant of the Simon Lake had given up the ghost. Both ships would have to be towed to a repair facility. The Navy had tried to obtain access to a French dry dock, but the French had no space, as their dry docks were fully employed. At least, that’s what they said, thought Cameron. The Italians were scrambling to see what they could do at their repair facility in Liverno. Since 1990. the Italian Navy had turned into one of the closest bilateral partners of the United States Navy.

  Meantime, Surflant dispatched tour oceangoing tugs to bring the two ships back to the States in the event that local repair efforts failed.

  Clive stood to the left of Rear Admiral Devlin. Admiral Cameron looked at the two and smiled — a smile with no joy behind it. “Clive, I hope you two haven’t finished this little vendetta we have going here. I would hate to miss the end of it.”

  “No, sir, Admiral. The move from the USS Nassau to the USS Stennis last week went off without a hitch. A lot of that was because Admiral Devlin’s staff covered for us as we did the move, and by the time we arrived, he had the Operations room here up and running.”

  “Is this all we have here? I rather liked the Nassau. They gave us their entire Combat Information Center.

  Well, at least one of them.”

  “No, sir. This is more a conference room than an Operations space. We’ve been holding officers’ call in the hangar deck and staff meetings in one of the officer’s dining compartments. Two compartments down on the starboard side, we have a mini-Combat Information Center.

  It’s smaller than the CIC on the Nassau, but we have access on every information cell on the ship, along with the global information grid to anywhere in the world. We are running our air operations from there.”

  Cameron pulled out a chair from under the small conference table, positioning himself so he could observe the televisions, and sat down. Both Clive and Admiral Devlin did the same.

  Cameron reached up and tweaked his nose. “It’s nice to know we have information superiority. Just hope we have the weapons to use it to our advantage. These past two weeks have been very hectic—”

  “Yes, sir, we understand,” said Clive. “We’re very sorry about Susan. I know this has not been an easy time for you.”

  Cameron waved his hand. “Let’s not go down that path. I need to concentrate on what we’re doing here. I would like to get the deputy chiefs of staff together as soon as possible to bring me up to date on our operations and status of our forces. As you both know, General Sutherland has identified General Leutze Lewis to relieve me and assume authority as the commander of the Joint Task Force. He prefers to be called Rocky, which is a good thing, considering how I murder his name.”

  “I’ll call him General. Personally, I think it is shitty as hell. Admiral, to replace you,” Devlin said. “And—”

  Cameron held up his hand. “No, it’s the right thing to do, Pete. I have too much on my plate as the commander of the Navy component in this operation to handle the logistics we need and the questions Washington keeps throwing at us. Right now, they have dual-hatted me as the commander in chief, United States Navy Forces in Europe.

  Admiral Dotson hopes to have a replacement for Admiral Prang as soon as NATO approves the replacement of that damn French general.

  “I met General Lewis while in Washington. He understands his role here is to coordinate the forces in the theater to help us finish our mission in Algeria and get the hell out. I know this sounds hard to believe, but I am looking forward to him assuming this burden.”

  Admiral Cameron’s comment seemed to lack veracity to Clive.

  Devlin opened his mouth to reply.

  “No, Pete,” interrupted Cameron, raising his hand higher before dropping it. “I know how you feel, and I can appreciate it, but don’t consider this a slam against my or your leadership. With the war in Korea taking new directions, we may have additional forces in that theater within the next three weeks. My goal is to have this wrapped up by then. General Lewis will bring a no-nonsense and objective approach to this campaign.”

  “If you say so, Gordon,” replied Devlin, his voice indicating he didn’t believe a word of it. No admiral in his right mind graciously gives up command.

  What Devlin didn’t know was that the death of Cameron’s wife Susan at the hands of the terrorists who attacked the Sixth Fleet officers while they dined at a local Italian bistro in Gaeta had put a new perspective in Gordon Cameron’s life. It had not changed his desire to do the best job possible and accomplish the mission assigned, but something his son said to him after the funeral still rang in his mind: ‘ matter how hard you work, Dad; no one on their deathbed has ever said, 7 wished I had worked a little harder.’” Regardless of what Cameron had told the two, the relationship with his son and daughter had deteriorated with the death of their mother — his wife.

  They didn’t say it, but he knew they believed he was the cause of her death. Leaving their mother’s body in an Italian morgue for three days as he left on the USS Albany to join the fleet seemed to them an insult to their mother. His daughter, in a moment of candor, told him it was another indication that the Navy was more important than the family. The couple of times he tried to make them understand that he did what he had to do failed miserably and left the three of them angry with each other. Someday, they might understand. For the time being, the three of them would mourn separately and, hopefully, they would become close again.

  “… this afternoon.”

  Camero
n heard the tail end of Clive’s comment. “I’m sorry, Clive. Could you repeat that? I missed it.”

  “I said that General Lewis is arriving this afternoon.”

  “What arrangements have we made for him and his staff?”

  Pete Devlin spoke up. “Admiral, billeting has been arranged. He and his staff will have to share our Operations space. We have integrated some of our staff elements to make it easier; now we will have three people manning every watch—”

  “Pete, you know we won’t do that. We’ll work with General Lewis. In fact, I want everyone on both our staffs to understand the importance of making the general’s job easier. He is the CJTF, and we will follow his guidance, recommendations, and orders.”

  “But—”

  “No, buts, Pete. No time for egos to get in the way of doing our job. If anyone has the right to feel slighted, it’s me. It’s my job he’s taking, and I welcome it. I know you find that hard to believe, but someday, over a beer, I shall tell you why I find it easy to accept.” The problems with his son and daughter had dulled the A-type personality of Admiral Cameron. He truly did welcome the relief of this burden from his shoulders and, in the back of his thoughts, he knew his days as an active-duty naval officer were coming to a close.

  Devlin nodded.

  “Good. There are some staff changes I want to make.

  Pete, I want to move you up to be my deputy. As you know, Sixth Fleet has always had a billet for two flag officers, but because of constraints, we have never filled that deputy billet. Clive, you have more or less functioned as my deputy for three years, so I don’t want you to feel slighted over this.”

  “No, sir,” Clive interjected. And he amazed himself to discover he had no feelings on the subject.

  “Admiral, I appreciate that, but I am also handling the air campaign. That may affect my being able to aptly carry out the duties of the deputy.”

  Cameron nodded. “I know, Pete. That’s why the second thing I want to do is to take that duty away from you.”

  “But who would we give it to? My deputy in Naples?